1 hour ago, KannikaP said:

Nanker /Phledge was the pseudonym for The Rolling Stones and Loog Oldhams early songs, and I didn't neet ChatAI to get that, I knew it.

The Hollies wrote under the name of L Ransford.

Percy Thrillington, Bernard Webb, Apollo C Vermouth, Clint Harrigan and Paul Ramon were all used by Sir Paul Macca.

Heard the other day that's where the Ramones got their name. Old news for some but for me it was a fun fact. 

19 hours ago, Fat is a type of crazy said:

Had one trip from Hawaii cross country to Boston but nothing that noteworthy. Liked Memphis and New Orleans and Washington and New York and all the usual places.  Highlight I suppose were the big tree forests and wild beaches east of Seattle and Bainbridge Island where family lived. Not long after Snow Falling on Cedars came out set in the same beautiful area. 

Should be west. No one cares but 

1 hour ago, LaosLover said:

As long as I'm killing time waiting for my cab to the airport, let me ask (again) about one of life's great mysteries:

 

Why do brits and commonwealth types care so much about US politics?

 

The last brit controversy I felt the need to have an opinion on was Oasis versus Blur (I voted Oasis, but I was a heavy drinker back then).

 

I've long given up on asking "why do you turkeys voting for Christmas love someone who wouldn't deign to spit on your chav self and would take away your healthcare in a heartbeat?".

 

Always radio-silence on that one.

Couldn't get the plaudits for Oasis. Blur, Pulp, Supergrass so much better from that era.

As an Australian I suppose we see many similarities with the United States way of life, big open spaces, and can see little sprouts of right wing Trumpism popping up here and there.

Of course Murdoch is an Australian and he has influenced his newspapers, with some success though not so much recently, to turn voters to the right. There is an Australian version of Fox News being Sky News in Australia that has failed to gain much traction. Australian politics has it's own issues but generally it is relatively civil and sensible and it is harder to get away with telling a lie without being held to account. Think the UK could be similar.

Of course much of our entertainment and news comes from the US. 

So what the big dog America does is always of interest, and one can wonder as to if it can happen in the US, can it happen in Australia.

I actually think Australians in general are a bit more down to earth and level headed politically, and seeing what is happening in the US may have actually helped the Labour party in Australia point out the games the right plays, albeit in a much less extreme way than in the US. 

Had one trip from Hawaii cross country to Boston but nothing that noteworthy. Liked Memphis and New Orleans and Washington and New York and all the usual places.  Highlight I suppose were the big tree forests and wild beaches east of Seattle and Bainbridge Island where family lived. Not long after Snow Falling on Cedars came out set in the same beautiful area. 

27 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

Everyone is already free to celebrate what they like, but i am starting to think that you'd be happier if religion, or belief in supernatural, was banned ???? 

Is that a recipe for a better society? I have serious doubts. 

No. Happy for people to think their way. Funny though how over time people are becoming much more agnostic and atheist yet traditions continue for all. Some stage maybe let Christians celebrate Christmas and the rest of us can get a day off for some other reason e.g. call it Summer solstice in Australia. Fine if it stays how it is but who knows in the future. 

37 minutes ago, mauGR1 said:

I really hope that you are joking, but you are probably being serious ????

I think there's a lot of believers who see the world through christian or new age spirituality or whatever eyes and see atheists or agnostics as an anomoly, or, because they don't believe, that they are kind of a nothing. He made the point that if there is Easter and Christmas for all why not a day to celebrate or consider a life from the point of view of someone who doesn't believe there is this other thing - maybe a day to consider what life might be like if what you see is what you get.  Not probably needed in Australia as it is a bit like that now but the United States and Thailand may benefit. 

Some good points on Bill Maher's New Rules on Youtube for 31 March 2023 asking why there is no Atheist's day. A third of American's do not identify as believing in a god so how about all the believer's spend some time considering and respecting a different opinion on the issue. 

9 hours ago, dotcalm said:

How Trump could reap $100M windfall from Stormy Daniels indictment

https://nypost.com/2023/03/31/trump-could-reap-100m-windfall-from-stormy-daniels-indictment

 

The left, always a day late and two or more steps behind.

I believe Trump is loving this.

If so a lot of Democrats will be happy. A diminished , or further diminished, candidate has the funds and passion from the maga punters, to win the Republican candidacy but then loses in a landslide when the average person can't fathom having 4 more years of that. 

I like this song about jail.

Hello Dad ... I'm In Jail - YouTube

I have often felt cemeteries are an anachronism in these times. Taking up real estate near cities.

I don't see a point going out to a cemetery to see the dead. Particularly in the age of photos, video, and online tributes. To me the person is no more in the cemetery than elsewhere and the gravestone or marker has no particular significance.

Many go for the big stone or even a mausoleum. Competition to impress can make it to the afterlife. 

Fair enough that due to religious beliefs and other reasons many feel differently. It might be good if there can be a change in mindset so that it is not seen as disrespectful to disconnect the link between the person and some bones in the ground. Could have a time limit of say 100 years so that it is there only while people who knew you are alive not dead. 

Delete

5 minutes ago, nauseus said:

Yes, I read about her. Media Matters!! Right. This constant political bias does not constitute true journalism. 

I suppose the proof is in the pudding. Did the news part of the station promote Tucker's claims or not. If they felt Tucker had completed fair and balanced good journalism - ha ha - I am sure they would have

27 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

Yes, the truth in a direct manner.
And yes, the human body is a great tool for truth finding, if you know how to use it. When you start to listen within, any kind of concept is a barrier, be it spiritual or materialistic. Concepts are mental constructs. When you listen within however, the goal is to shake off such concepts, like onion skins. And then you work yourself inwards, towards the heart of it, peeling off layers as you go. Just ask yourself: Who am I? Are you the body? Are you the mind? Your feelings and emotions? Your memories? Your name? Layer after discarded layer, you become lighter, more free, more yourself. So you continue as far as you can go. 
The onion skins closest to the heart are the most stubborn. They've been there for a long time. They were put there when we were very young. 
But once those have been peeled off too, what is left?? Who were you before you were given a name? 
You could call it "the heart of the onion", or "Divine Onion" or "The Onioness" or many other cool names.

 

I wouldn't say that they are beyond our senses at all. It depends on which senses you're talking about. The internal senses are very adequate to know the inner world. That's their job. And it's not distant at all. How far are you from you?

 

No need to take on a complete belief system. The only thing you need is a healthy curiosity to find out if there is more to you than what you've been told. What is there to believe? Nothing. Believing is replaced by knowing. What do you have to lose?
We are made of 3 fundamental parts (or onion layers): body, mind and spirit. Leaving any one of them out would only increase the doubt, because you would be trying to hide something... to yourself. And that won't work to your advantage.

Interesting. Could be obvious but I think at birth we are freer in some ways and more limited in some ways that at an older age. As we age, we get limited in ways we were free, and free in ways we were limited. I don't simply mean in terms of mobility but how we think and feel. 

A practical example is if you return to your childhood home, or smell a smell from the past, you feel some things open up, like your smile is broader and you are more relaxed and possibly more sensible in that you don't care about a lot of stuff you care about later. 

So before I had a name I had characteristics of me but a different configuration. Put together slightly differently. 

I don't sense an inner onion as that suggests something other than me like digging for gold. Maybe you mean that you have become disconnected and need to reconnect and feel as you did before you had a name. That makes sense. 

But what could you know? Why couldn't that reconnection still be the physical you. It might feel special but is it necessarily a sign of a different plane or something since you can in fact sense and feel it on this plane. Drugs can have the effect and they are 100 per cent physical. 

So is the only thing you know that you have an inner onion? What else do you know? Seth for example might resonate with you but surely you doubt. 

I focus a bit on the doubt aspect as I see doubt as a strength rather than a weakness. It might get to a point where you can say that you need to experience what you have experienced and that's fine. 

9 hours ago, Sunmaster said:

I let that run through my mind...
I think that's an excellent question that we should all ask ourselves. 

It's human nature to add items to whatever framework we are working with. How much of what is in that framework comes from your own experience and how much derives from other sources? What are the conditions for those other sources to be accepted in your framework? 

For me, there must be a degree of trust, and trust has to be earned. I think it's safe to say that we all have some beliefs that are based on info from the outside. People usually don't go to verify the math behind gravitational attraction. They trust that the source has done its homework and that the results are valid. 

The same goes for more metaphysical data. Take Paramhansa Yogananda for example. Throughout his life he was consistent between what he said and what he did. No students abuse, no sexual misconduct, no amassing of luxury goods or power. All he ever did was to point out the divine within each of us and give practical tools on how to reconnect with it. What he said about the divine matched my own experience, but went a lot further than that. Given that condition (info consistent with my framework) and trust in the source (judged by actions rather than words), the info that goes beyond my personal experience was adopted safely in the framework as well. 

The biggest problem I see, is that some may not have the discerning tools to evaluate whether a source is reliable or not. They go by overall consensus. "Most people say it's like that, so it's probably true". Info gets added to the framework unchecked.

And this is exactly what my main point has been in the past years on this forum. From the very beginning I pointed out that true knowledge comes from the inside. You can read a million self-help books or holy books and it won't change you much. Yet, one instant of deep insight can change everything. 

Practice is the key to reconnect with your inner world. 
Practice strengthens and expands the framework.

Practice is the fuel that powers the BS detector.
Practice is transformative.
Practice is the key to go from believing to knowing.
Practice is the Antivirus in the USB drive.

 

So you have to experience the truth direct. At the risk of repeating myself, on that basis, the best shot at honesty is to pare away all ideas of the religious and spiritual, be it karma or reincarnation or a spiritual plane or any concept of god, since our best opportunity at learning about ourselves comes from one thing. The human body. 

You can draw conclusions about what experiences and thoughts and feelings say about your body and mind, to a much higher degree, than about what you can conclude about outside your body. 

In that sense, though some ideas about god or spirituality may seem to fit better than others, such concepts are much more distant from what can be known, as they are a step beyond our feelings thoughts and senses.

Therefore as much as belief is tempting there must be doubt. The doubt is lessened if we focus on the mind and body and not the concepts of god and spirit. 

You've got to give up. If some can't see what's wrong with posting this image and other recent tweets then it's best to say 'OK Thanks for your comment. Have a nice day.' 

6 minutes ago, BangkokReady said:

It's no retreat at all.  People are saying the picture shows a bat next to Bragg's head, I'm saying they're lying.

To me you are splitting hairs. He is threatening him with a baseball bat whether it is aimed as it is head or body isn't really a key issue though one could say if you swing a baseball bat you are likely to hit the upper part of the body. It seems odd to focus on this minor issue given the themes in his tweets but ok maybe he is indicating a threatening gesture that may not hit his head.

46 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

I will answer this one because it's about my personal experience.
I had that one major experience which was responsible for changing everything. For several months afterwards I was ecstatic and "blissed out". But I was also <deleted> off, because I wanted to know why nobody had ever told me about this. How come this wasn't taught at school? How come nobody even knows about it? The world would be so much better if this were common knowledge and practiced daily.

I can describe the experience like this....

By surrendering to what wanted to rise up (kundalini), I offered my ego to be obliterated. That construction we call our identity, fell in one big swoop and allowed the kundalini to rise unobstructed through my whole body. Once it reached my head, there was an explosion of light and I had a clarity about myself and the workings of the world that I never even suspected were possible at all.
It was like when you have a USB drive with a lot of junk on it. The kundalini formatted that drive and this allowed it to be filled with a lot more useful and truthful data. 

Now you're right when you doubt that the things I mentioned in the previous post all came from that one experience. They didn't. The experience created a new framework. One which must include everything (the good, the bad, the ugly, science, religion, spirituality and everything in between). If even one aspect of reality doesn't fit this "theory of everything", then that means the theory is not complete. Notice how this is usually the other way around, "This idea doesn't fit my belief system, therefore it must be false."
So then, this framework was created on the ruins of the old one. From here on, I did my own research, reading everything I could get my hands on. The money I spent on books! No internet at that time. Everything I learned found its place in this new framework. 

To answer your question: Yes, a lot of data was downloaded to my "USB drive". This data alone dispensed with the need to believe once and for all. I don't endorse any one single belief system in particular, but try to find the gems of truth in all of them. That's why I can easily jump from talking about scientific consciousness research to meditation, or from physics to mysticism, and I see no contradictions whatsoever. 

Wow, that was a long one. Tippaporn must have infected me with his writing style virus. Yes, I blame him.
 

Thanks. I quite like that explanation. In a sense it is like you are saying that you felt or sensed what something better or more real felt like, and then you could use that as a guide, so when you read interpretations of spirituality, or other stuff, you could see if is consistent with that experience and if it fits in your new frame of reference or not.

You would need to be careful in the interpretation of that experience, and what it left you with, in terms of knowledge and belief and differentiating between the two. 

27 minutes ago, Sunmaster said:

You see it as a contradiction, but it's not.

 

Life is full of seemingly unfair situations, children with cancer being one, but also the rich and powerful who get away with things that poor people can't, the sh!t that happens to you despite your best efforts, "it's always the best of us who die young", diseases that befall nice people and so on. 

 

But contradictions are only such when you look at them from the perspective where they were created. If you look at them from a higher perspective, you would be able to integrate them in a wider framework. 

 

In the case above, this would mean a situation where the idea of a benevolent higher power AND sick children can coexist at the same time and are not mutually exclusive. 

 

How is that possible? 

The higher perspective tells me that life is a dream-like scenario. Buddhists call it samsara (illusion), Shakespeare called it a stage, where we are the actors.

 

What do we do on this dreamlike stage?

We slip into a body (play a role) to act out certain scenarios, from which we are supposed to learn something. Through us and our experiences, God can experience itself.

 

What could a sick child learn from cancer? Maybe compassion for other suffering creatures. Maybe they agreed to this scenario to teach those around them about compassion. Maybe something else...

 

The point is that each and everyone of us agreed to be here. Nothing happens by chance. There are no victims of circumstances. 

This life is just a blink of an eye for the eternal soul, and from the perspective of the soul, even the hardest life will appear like a fleeting dream. 

 

The way I see it, there's no contradiction.

The faith is strong in this one. It is appreciated that you had a go to answer this.

You may have had experiences to help you believe there is a god. But did your experiences telegraph the reality you describe? It could be you have linked your experiences to a particular belief system and decided that you'll go with the whole package.

What happened in the universe to make individual spirits exist, and be created imperfect and have so much to learn, and in what sense does each spirit agree to go through the life they go through. 

Does that mean the evolved being feels nothing when people die, when anything happens, as it was part of a learning experience. If they do feel sadness then why.

Do I and the parents really learn something useful if I die a day after birth. What was going on for the millions of years there was no life - was that when spirits were being created. From what and how and why. 

So someone is tortured for 30 years in a basement and you say it is a kind god and he is helping you to learn from this and the future will be better because of this learning?  Surely many experiences do more unlearning and damage than good. Therefore is there an antigod. 

They are tough issues but I guess I would want to have these sort of answers  if I was to say I believe something. Otherwise I might say I had some experiences that indicate there is a god but beyond that not sure.